Science deniers hurt Sanctuary

Sanctuary fence had been vandalised and trees cut down across the access road.

The morning of the drop, safety fences were pushed over, and a hole drilled in a helicopter refuelling tank. Later that morning, Nelson MP Nick Smith reported a man and a woman tried to rub rat poison over him, and threatened to poison his family.

New Zealanders have broadly agreed to rid this country of pests by 2050, and the Government has backed the proposal with nearly $60m of funding.

Predator Free 2050 has justly won the admiration of the international conservation community, and restored some measure of hope for the nearly 4000 native species at some degree of risk of extinction

But clearly, not everyone has subscribed.

Alongside new trap technology, refined toxin application techniques, long-life lures and gene editing, the Brook fiasco signals an urgent need for a parallel programme of psychosocial research.

For the sake of the projects that follow, we have to identify the underlying drivers of the sort of delirious science denial that dogged the Brook eradication.

For years, comms teams have simply fired off facts out of some forlorn belief that truth will eventually prevail; that people will finally accept the weight of research and evidence. But there is a sector of the society – and we have no idea how big it is – for whom facts are anathema.

The Brook activists chose to entirely ignore the reality that other fenced sanctuaries – Zealandia in Wellington, Orokonui in Dunedin, Shakespear Park north of Auckland, Maungatautari in Waikato – all used aerial brodifacoum to eradicate rats, with none of the apocalyptic doom they foretold for Nelson.

For some, power lies not in knowledge, but belief.

By late afternoon on the day of the drop, Brook activists were posting on Facebook that they were succumbing to poisoning: lawyer for the group, Sue Grey, complained that her ‘‘exposed skin was red and burning’’, and urged her compatriots: ‘‘If my health suddenly deteriorates please can someone make sure that I get an urgent injection of Vitamin K.’’

It behoves us to understand just what is going on here, because solutions to the problems we have to solve – climate change, biodiversity loss, water pollution, human health – can only be informed by science.

But what if swathes of society refuse to accept that science?

It’s too late for the Brook Sanctuary.

The BVCG will almost certainly dissolve when the time comes for reparation of the vast costs it has inflicted.

In late August, Group leader Christopher St Johanser pondered the option of ‘‘starting again somewhere else’’, removing any doubt around their purported ‘‘community’’ ambition.

He went on to insist that the Group ‘‘has a right to survive this’’ (even if, apparently, the Sanctuary did not). They will retire to their Facebook forums, ready to conspire the next time someone tries to save wildlife somewhere.

We don’t have time for this. Our biodiversity is withering, fast.

Somehow, we have to build a collective vision of an Aotearoa rowdy with kaka, rustling with lizards underfoot, where flights of bats are a dusk delight – that everyone can subscribe to.